Math on my Mind

February 24, 2012

After hearing friends rave about a new TV series called “Touch”, I finally broke down and watched the pilot on VOD. The series is about a man who lost his wife in the World Trade Center attacks and is left to take care of his emotionally-challenged eleven-year old boy who has a gift with numbers. The young boy is a mathematics genius and is able to see the interconnectivity of life and people through numbers and can predict events. Watching this series made me think of my own personal relationship with the subject of mathematics. While I relished solving word problems in crossword puzzles or writing stories, It had a difficult relationship with mathematics. What is it with mathematics?

In a study released in 2008 by the American Mathematical Society, it was determined that the USA has fallen behind in math education of both girls and boys. Much of the disinterest in mathematics appears to be cultural. According to the study, it is not part of the American culture to value talent in mathematics and this cultural mindset discourages boys and girls from excelling in the field. In fact the study showed that the boys and girls, especially girls who seemed to excel in math competitions in US schools were children of families recently immigrated to the U.S. from countries such as Russia, Romania, China, S. Korea, where the teaching of mathematics and its importance is a key component of those countries’ educational curriculum.

In my family, education has been first and foremost. I had the privilege of attending private schools in Iran and England, and here in the US. But I always feared mathematics, it was the least favorite of my subjects. I envied those classmates who seemed to just get it. For them solving mathematical equations was as easy as 2+2. Yet, I struggled. I avoided a math course in college by majoring in Political Science. But when I set my sights to grad school for an MBA, the dreaded GMAT with its math component sent me running to my uncle, a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics and a professor in mathematics, for intensive tutoring. Watching him solve the math problems on the GMAT test samples was like watching a master painter at work with his paintbrushes. It seemed so effortless and natural. He would chuckle at the problems and nod his head at their simplicity while I looked on enviously.

Why can’t we all benefit from the beauty of mathematics? Why can’t we all experience the same joy felt by those who get it? Is it cultural? Fearing to be labeled as nerds and ostracized at school, boys and girls almost intentionally avoid or dismiss math preventing any chance of excelling in the subject. Have we placed stigmas on math? We’ve all heard comments like “math is hard,” or “only boys are good at math,” and the best one of all “you’ll never use math in real life.”

In the TV series “Touch,” the little boy doesn’t speak, yet he communicates through numbers. Mathematics is a language and like any language we need to learn it at a very early age and we need to make it fun and interesting and relevant. Imagine how enriched our lives would be if we were able to see the interconnectivity of all life form, a gift that words alone do not accomplish, but with a little help from mathematics, we could see the world with a new perspective.

Jasmin S. Kuehnert

President & CEO of Academic Credentials Evaluation Institute, Inc. (ACEI)

www.acei1.com

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0 TO 99 AND COUNTING…

February 16, 2012

Of course we all know that the crumbling Education System in America is but a microcosm, (if you choose to regard education in such a manner), of the general state of daily life for the 99%. The latest mind-numbing statistics on poverty, “One out of every two Americans are currently living either in poverty or near poverty,” just does not jibe with the American Dream. Check out this link: Tavis and Cornel’s Solution to Poverty. We must ask ourselves how we have allowed this level of extreme disparity to grow and blossom, unchecked and what that means for the future of education, and therefore the kind of societies we can expect to find ourselves living in. I often wonder what the ultra-wealthy 1% see when they think of the future of their children and grandchildren, living in a society surrounded by the majority of starving, uneducated desperate people. I imagine a scenario akin to a scene in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, in which Cate Blanchett’s evil, self-righteous character is dangling in mid-air, frantically clasping onto a vine in an effort to avoid being eaten alive by a swarm of ravenous giant fire ants….

The current thinking behind several of the educational/social reform initiatives on the table, such as the “Race to the Top Initiative,” frighteningly follow a “corporate” structure of success, and are engineered to ultimately create a powerless, non-union labor force, basically compliant worker bees. It is a bit sinister really, to think that the “best and the brightest” whom President Obama called in to help draft education reforms, are the very heads of corporations that rake in the money and actually benefit as the rest of the country sinks deeper into despair. The companies need workers and they have conveniently pointed the finger of blame away from themselves for the painful poverty levels across the country and at teachers unions and the teachers themselves for the lack of education, found in seriously impoverished schools. This initiative dangles the carrot of federal funds in the face of school districts, promising that money will be doled out to those districts whose students score well on tests. And those that don’t fare so well, risk a reduction in teacher pay, lost jobs, even school closures. That should really help…shut down overpopulated schools in poor, more often than not non-white neighborhoods. Hmmm, once again, forcing the race card and basically saying that imposing a competitive business model on educators will be the stimulant to bring about a quick turn around in the quality of education. BIG problem with that picture!

When I think back on my own education, I am fully aware of how fortunate I was. I was an extremely shy, math-challenged little girl with a cirque-d-soleil fantasy world going on in my head during most of my classes, and actually during most of my waking hours. I knew that I was a bit different than other kids in my class at a fairly early age, had difficulty making friends, and was pretty content to keep to myself for most of my early educational years. I could have easily fallen through the cracks. I was fortunate in that I went to school in the Beverly Hills public $chool $ystem where we had well-paid teachers, enough desks for everyone–– our classrooms were definitely not over-crowded. Our teachers knew our names, actually had time to engage with each of us on a regular basis, and had the possibility to sense and relate to those of us that thought “outside the box.” The faculty was given the ability and leeway to develop creative lesson plans which they felt would be the most engaging and stimulating in order to meet the educational requirements passed down by the Board of Education. We had a pretty wide ranging, and well-rounded curriculum, even in elementary school, which at the time ranged from 2nd-through 8th grade. It kept things interesting and stimulated different parts of our brains. In High School, we had the luxury of “elective” courses in subjects that were of interest to us: Advanced Art, Drama, Music and Language, etc. Sounds like education Nirvana, right?

But please don’t get me wrong, all of us were not model students, and all teachers were not engaged, creative educators, and not all principals were without their own peculiarities. And my minor bumps along the way are not comparable to the daily problems and pains faced by students and educators living and working in poverty. But I just try and imagine what it would have been like if those same heavy-handed consequences were imposed on my teachers and all of us that did not fare so well on standardized tests. I had an elementary school principal that ran around with a tape measure, measuring from the top of our white Nancy Sinatra-Beetle Boots to the bottom of our hem-lines, who sent me directly home from school when he determined that my skirt was “too short,” forcing me to miss an important test. I also had an angry, mean, frustrated ego-maniac of an art teacher that made me cry in front of the class, telling me that my work was horrible, and ultimately gave me a barely passing grade. In high school I had a math teacher that had anxiety attacks during class, mostly brought on by a particular group of unruly boys bent on tormenting him. This teacher had to stop talking, sit down at his desk located in the front of the class, remove an empty brown-paper lunch bag from his bottom drawer, breathe into it, then pour himself a thermos cup full of milk and eat a banana before resuming our lesson, while we all sat there in silent witness. No wonder I have a math block.

Quaint anecdotes, but can you imagine the circumstances that teachers face today, being held accountable for, and then rewarded or punished based on their classroom test scores? Tests, which occur at such alarmingly rising rates, that they squeeze out any time for creative and retentive teaching and learning, and teachers merit as educators being judged on the slightest variance in test scores. My poor anxiety-ridden math teacher would have been out on the street, trying to find a job at 59.

Teachers working in atmospheres of racial inequality and poverty, where many students come to school and stay hungry, too poor to have breakfast or lunch. Children who bring the emotional issues of their lives at home, forged by the daily struggle to survive: absent parents, violence, food insecurity and no emotional support systems. Classrooms where the teachers compete with clandestine cell phones streaming just about everything, and rampant text messaging. Oh yes, and drugs and alcohol, but those aren’t new. Whew. Despite all that, there are wonderful teachers handicapped by these injustices, who find engaged and creative ways to do their job. Gee, let’s come up with a system that punishes these circumstances rather than funnels funds their way to improve and support the teachers.

Well, sometimes enough is just enough. The cards are all on the table now; the agenda is not hidden. So when I think about the current state of affairs in education reform, I am left with only one conclusion. The best way to change all of this is to organize, and continue to create movements, taking the necessary risks to break the status quo in order to take back our lives and change the future of generations to come. We have to make parents aware that these problems did not happen overnight, they are the result of centuries of economic and racial inequality, and the gap is growing wider by the day. And the only way to affect change in corporate governments is to have the courage to follow the lead of some of those brave enough to unite in an effort to effect political change.

The strong and committed Wisconsin Teachers Unions did just that, by initiating and leading a protest against the “Budget Repair Bill” which asked for major cuts to social programs, and the removal of all collective bargaining rights for public sector workers statewide. Governor Scott Walker, who is currently facing possible impeachment, threatened to send in the National Guard to fill the gaps left by state workers who dared to protest. This grew into a fight for a democratic way of life, and has become a historically ground-breaking movement. For an enlightening look at the power in unity, view this trailer for the upcoming documentary film “We Are Wisconsin“.

Fight On!

Jeannie Winston Nogai
Owner / Winston Nogai Design
www.jeanniewinston.com / E: jwndesign@me.com

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The Blame Game: It’s your fault! No, it’s your fault!

February 9, 2012

I am frustrated!

I have just been through the twilight zone and emerged confused and perplexed; confused as to why someone else’s failure to provide necessary information, in this case payment for service is somehow my fault, and perplexed as to why an individual would even go through the effort of blaming someone else for their own error or oversight. Before any of you jump to the defense of the individual in question who has rattled my nerves, let me assure you that this person hails from an English-speaking nation, so language is not the barrier between us. A series of email communiques is proof!

Allow me to pose a hypothetical scenario for you to help explain the cause for my frustration.

Let’s say you’re in a store and want to pay for a sweater you’ve picked out. It’s winter. It’s cold outside, and the sweater is just the perfect item of clothing you’ve been looking for to keep you warm and cozy. You’re at the counter with the sweater. You want to pay with your credit card and hand it to the cashier. The cashier runs your card but the transaction is declined because of insufficient funds. The cashier politely suggests other forms of payment. You ignore her and leave the store and the sweater only to return a month later and demand to have the sweater. Cashier is ready to comply and quotes you the price for the sweater. But you refuse to pay. You claim that you had the matter cleared with your bank and that the cashier should have ran your credit card when she had it that day you had visited the store. Cashier reminds you that your credit card had been declined that day, but you don’t acknowledge it and demand to have the sweater, for free. You hold the cashier and the store negligent. You blame the store for having deprived you of enjoying the warm and cozy sweater. Oh, and by the way, if you don’t get the sweater for free, you’re going to call your lawyer!

Now do you see why I’m so frustrated? How does one make sense of the nonsensical?

Lots of people play the blame game when it comes to money. In her 1/24/12 article “Money and the Blame Game” Mindy Crary (MBA, CFP® practitioner and financial coach at Creative Money) in Forbes, she writes “blaming someone else or yourself about any frustrations over money has to do with the basic thought that your survival is being compromised. The perception is that this other person has the power to make or break your financial life, depending on what they do. It’s very difficult to like, much less love, someone on whom you believe that your survival depends. So when you are engaged in the blame game, you may forget that you are every bit as responsible for the relationship dynamic as the other person.” Shifting out of a victim mentality, according to Ms. Crary, first starts with “owning your role and acknowledging how you have been an equal partner in creating the situation, with the power to affect alternate outcomes.”

In my situation, we’ve reached an impasse with our prospective applicant who’s refusing to pay for services. Same could be said about the store and the sweater scenario above. We cannot proceed with the evaluation and have directed the individual to seek the assistance of another company. There are times that no matter how hard each side tries to argue his/her point, words just collide, bounce away, and tumble to the floor into a jumbled heap. Sometimes, it’s just not worth the time and energy to play the blame game; we end up missing control of own sense of self and most importantly: peace of mind.

The Frustrated Evaluator
www.acei1.com

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Academic Documents: The Psychology of Fraud

February 2, 2012

In less than a week, two senior analysts in my company detected irregularities on documents we had received for evaluation and both were able to determine that the documents had been falsified. Though the due diligence exercised by our team of analysts in their scrupulous review and handling of these applications is to be applauded, I am left with an uncomfortable sensation in the pit of my stomach. The two individuals whose false documents were quickly detected are intending to pursue employment and further studies in fields directly related to the welfare of the public. We may have succeeded in protecting our institution and those directly related but not the larger network of institutions and the general public. These individuals’ fraudulent documents may easily slip through the cracks in the hands of a less-experienced credential evaluator, personnel administrator, or college admissions officer.

Several years ago, I served as an expert witness on a legal case where the plaintiff, a young woman, had been misdiagnosed by a psychiatrist and suffered extensively under this therapist’s care. My investigation of the psychiatrist’s degrees revealed a trail of altered documents and diplomas from non-existent institutions. In fact, one of the universities he claimed to have attended for his doctorate degree was a diploma mill. The plaintiff was able to go forward and press charges, and the therapist’s license for practice was revoked. (A definition of diploma mills is provided on the US Government’s Department of Education website.)

According to a 2003 report by UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning, “Academic fraud appears to be on the increase across the world, in developing and developed countries alike. It is a costly threat to societies, to their efficient operation and to public trust in the reliability and security of their institutions.”

The question we need to ask is what is causing this steady increase in academic fraud? What is the motivation? Is it an act of desperation? Is it a reaction to a competitive marketplace? There’s the old adage that desperate times force people to take desperate measures. But falsifying documents, in particular academic documents, which in many instances are used as the benchmark to qualify for a job or professional training, endangers the lives of those who are directly affected by the actions and services of the very people who misrepresent themselves as technicians, engineers, doctors, and teachers. The increasing participation in formal education perpetuates competition; competition for access to higher education, for jobs, training, higher salaries, promotions, and professional recognition. A few months ago, a news report spoke of a university professor in The Netherlands who had falsified his doctoral dissertation and held a teaching post at a prominent university. It is not just the individual immigrating to a new country, desperate to find a job to support his family, who may, out of desperation falsify his/her academic documents. The psychology of fraud transcends borders, cultures, and socio-economic ranks.

As our societies and economic structure continue to develop and expand–demanding a highly educated and skilled workforce–the pressure to obtain academic documents which meet these skillsets increases. It is no longer sufficient to complete the minimum required levels of education when higher and more specialized degrees are becoming the norm. One’s success in school and university has great value. Successful performance in examinations helps open not only doors to higher education and professional training but ensure a better chance of securing a job or promotion in a pool of qualified and aspiring candidates.

Advances in electronic communication, sophisticated copy machines and computer printers, system-wide bribery, plagiarism, degree and paper mills, impersonations, are now contributing to an industry of academic document fraud. We sit and watch perpetrators of white-collar crimes receive little or no punishment for their actions. Instead, we reward them with book deals, TV shows, high-paying consulting and speaker’s fees! We must shift our global mindset to a culture where integrity and ethical behavior are fostered and applauded; not a culture that supports and encourages the motto of “success by any means” where unscrupulous actions are the norm.

Jasmin S. Kuehnert
President & CEO of Academic Credentials Evaluation Institute, Inc. (ACEI)
www.acei1.com

Since founding ACEI in 1994, Jasmin and her team of analysts have dedicated
themselves to the advancement of international academic exchange and
understanding, through the dissemination of information on world educational
systems, and evaluation of international academic documents.

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Music and Art: Tools for Survival

January 26, 2012

Classical pianist Alexis Weissenberg recently died. He was considered one of the great virtuosos of the last century. He was a child prodigy in Bulgaria when he and his mother were taken prisoner by German soldiers in 1941. Weissenberg had a small accordion and could play excellent renditions of Schubert piano works and lieder. By chance there was a music-loving German guard nearby who was taken with the young boy’s virtuosity–it was obvious even on the accordion–and helped get him and his mother on a train and safety in Turkey. Weissenberg had his U.S. debut in 1947 playing Rachmaninov’s fiendishly difficult Piano Concerto #3. He lived for a time in Israel, and later made Paris his home. He died there on January 8th, 2012 at the age of 82.



Chance also spared Vann Nath‘s life, but he had a more extended and horrifying experience. He was born into a poor farming family in Battambang Province in Cambodia in 1946. He learned to be a sign and billboard painter. The brutal Khmer Rouge, during their reign of terror 1975-9, imprisoned him at the end of 1977, where he was shackled and tortured like scores of others in the notorious Tuol Sleng prison. It so happened that one of his jailers found out he could paint and assigned him the job of painting ennobling portraits of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader. Nath soon found out that eight or nine painters didn’t please Duch–nickname of the commandant at Tuol Sleng prison–and had been summarily executed. Nath once said that “every brush stroke you were hoping that they would like it and let you live”. He was liberated by the Vietnamese army in 1979.

Nath continued to paint the horrific things he had seen, and later became a key eyewitness in the trials of former Khmer Rouge leaders. He became a surviving representative of not only Tuol Sleng prison but of the two million Cambodians murdered by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. His 1998 memoir, A Cambodian Prison Portrait: One Year in the Khmer Rouge’s S-21 Prison, offers a unique and unsparing glimpse into the horrors he witnessed.

I once was in a Border’s Bookstore and saw photographs taken of Cambodian prisoners holding signs with their numbers on them. Some were shyly smiling, and I had the feeling that they had never been photographed before. They must have had an inkling on what would become of them. They all were so innocent. Before long I was in the corner sobbing and trying not to let anybody see me. The horror was overwhelming.

Vann Nath died in September, 2011, at the age of 65. Like Weissenberg, his life was spared by his artistic talents, but for him there was no friendly guard to help him escape. He never recovered by the horrors he had been witness to. His portraits of misery and death in Cambodia, however, serve as a timeless reminder of the cruelty and barbarity of the Khmer Rouge.

Tom Schnabel, M.A.
Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
Host of music program on radio for KCRW Sundays noon-2 p.m.
Blogs for KCRW (rhythm planet / KCRW)
Author & Music educator, UCLA, SCIARC, currently doing music salons
www.tomschnabel.com

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1, 2, 3: Delivering information to students around the world

January 20, 2012

Billy Wilder used film as a vehicle for raising social awareness in the hilariously acerbic comedy, “One, Two, Three” which took place in Post-War Berlin. Art imitates life full tilt here as the Germans erected the Berlin Wall during filming. Wilder was a bit daring for this time period of extreme social unrest and change on the heels of WWII. Exactly! Making a strong social statement that has the power and potential to reach people and provoke heart-felt reactions is to say the least difficult. It is uncomfortable to see the extreme suffering and inequality in the world 24/7. Where once people could feign innocence by pleading that they had no idea what was going on that is hardly the reality today. In the film, James Cagney’s heel-clicking male secretary Schlemmer, responds to Cagney’s question, “Just between us Schlemmer, what did you do during the war?” Schlemmer responds, “..I had no idea what was going on above ground…”

As an art form, film is an extremely powerful media, and used in a certain way, it has the ability to reach into our hearts and connect us to the very things inside ourselves that can be energized to promote social justice and change. Social media in general and the availability of film on the Internet is an exciting, vital and instantaneous result of the digital media revolution. It offers a chance to address one of the biggest dilemmas facing education; how can we deliver information on an equal and just level to all students around the world, around countries, states, cities a villages? How can we engage students and keep them excited and enthusiastic about learning? The way I see it is not quite as simple as 1, 2, 3, but that might be a good device with which to get started.

1. Bring History into the Present

A beautiful example of this was the newly released Black Power Mixtape a fascinating and revealing documentary of the Black Power Movement in America, from 1967-1975. The footage was created by Swedish journalists and edited together after having been recently found in the basement of a Swedish television station.

The history of that seminal movement may be new to some, but the subject matter is not. Martin Luther King Jr. day just passed, and it is still hard to reconcile the fact that racial and gender discrimination are both sadly alive and well. On a recent show on KPFK’s Democracy Now, Amy Goodman held a discussion on the eve of Martin Luther King Jr. day to discuss the mass Incarceration of Black Americans. She quoted Michelle Alexander who revealed a startling fact, “…there are more African Americans percentage-wise imprisoned in the United States, more black people, than were at the height of apartheid South Africa.” How could I not know this fact?

I grew up in California, and was extremely fortunate to receive the best possible education while attending public school. Mind you, it was in Beverly Hills, so that sort of removes it from comparison to any other public educational institutions. My first year in High School, 1970, was the first year of busing for the school. In my high school, of course it was one-way busing. I’ll explain. Busing, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, was the forced busing of students from one part a city to another, as a means to de-segregate schools, and was a direct result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. All over America the cities themselves were and to a great degree, and still are, racially segregated. School districts lines were intentionally created to segregate schools and were often, (see Jim Crow laws) conscious efforts to send black and in Los Angeles, Mexican children, to inferior schools. But they did not “bus” the wealthier white kids to the schools in the poorer communities of color, all that way across town. We never talked about that as students; we just went on about our integrated lives while taking courses such as “Black Studies” and “Native American Studies.”

I don’t remember which class it was in, but we were shown the 1955 film Nacht und Nebel (“Night and Fog)” by Alain Resnais. It was an absolutely horrifying experience as a documentary short film about the horrors of the Nazi Concentration Camps. I never forgot those two words.

2.Global Partnership in Technology

If the goal is to educate, truly, and disseminate knowledge and history so relevant to our world today, why not use the technology so readily available, to bring education to everyone? Using digital technology, we have a chance to bring education infused with energy and excitement to, just about everyone! Give students of all ages a chance to learn by doing, and by example. Use film and digital video to break down the inequality in education that exists not only in 3rd world villages, but also in some of the wealthiest communities in the leading countries of the world. A very inspiring and successful example of this is The Bridgeit Program in Tanzania. Educational video content is available via mobile technology to 150 rural primary schools in Tanzania. Classrooms have large computer monitors and from mobile phones, teachers can select from a wide variety of lessons, some of them tailored to fit their local area and address local issues. Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, the Vodacom Foundation, and the Pearson Foundations are in partnership with the International Youth Foundation and the Tanzanian Ministry of Education, to make this advanced technology possible. There you go. If that can happen in Tanzania, there is no reason whatsoever that cannot happen everywhere. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eif2UKRNIOg

3. Get Corporations Involved

Now that we have the media attention, why not get creative and come up with ways that global corporations might participate, and clean up their image a bit? The International Youth Foundation has partnered again with, believe it or not, Starbucks TM. Starbucks TM has created The Starbucks TM Youth Action Grants Program, which makes funding available with grants of approx. $10,000 each. These grants directly support the efforts of young people around the world, enabling and encouraging them to become innovators and increase their skills in order to improve their lives, communities and expand their ability to make a difference on a global scale. Take Plan B, Kenya, one of the 2011 grant recipients. They are using video art to energize active interest among students on college campuses in Kenya, surrounding the issues in the 2012 elections. http://www.canthingsgetbetter.org/

Perhaps the joy and delight I have found in learning new things has its basis in my early educational years. The excitement of traveling the highways of our minds, finding ourselves stimulated and enriched while on a voyage of discovery–– is a gift that should be given to all children, to people of all ages and all walks of life. Only by becoming fully aware can we hope to be engaged participants in our own lives and in the world. What a wonderful thing to help children find their own path, and have the courage and self-esteem to walk on it. How different the world would look.

“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” ~Malcolm Forbes

Jeannie Winston Nogai
Owner / Winston Nogai Design
www.jeanniewinston.com / E: jwndesign@me.com

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My Place of Birth

January 12, 2012

I had no idea the Pandora’s box I’d be opening as I set off ten years ago to work on a book, loosely based on my Persian paternal grandparents. Half way through my second re-write of the manuscript, I found myself so moved by the 2009 Green Revolution that was blossoming in Iran that I put it aside. I decided rather to write about my personal journey as a foreign student, a freshman at the University of San Diego, at the time of the 1979 revolution that toppled the Shah’s regime and created the Islamic Republic. But that story gave way to another, and another, and three years later I have in my possession a total of 15 chapters of my life growing up in Iran, a student at an all-girl’s boarding school in England, an undergraduate at the University of San Diego, and as a political refugee.

The Pandora’s box contains nuggets of information that kept and keep falling into my lap each time I research a topic, from the Persian New Year, to the history of a town or evolution of the cinema or pop music in Iran. Each time I am presented with a tip that seems at first peripheral to my story, or that’s what I think, yet, as I dig deeper, I am forever transformed by what I discover.

Take the chapter I wrote about my baptism, orchestrated by my Christian Armenian maternal grandparents, without the knowledge or approval of my agnostic parents. But in writing this piece I needed details, so I started at the beginning. I was born at the American Presbyterian Hospital in Mashhad, a city in northeastern Iran, under the medical attention of two American physicians, one a Sgt. in the US army, and driven to our home, five days later, in my father’s canary yellow Cadillac El Dorado. It seems I was destined to end up in the US given my early brush with Americans!

Mashhad is also home to the shrine of Imam Reza, one of Shi’a Islam’s holy sites, attracting millions of pilgrims each year. The religious denomination of the American Hospital did not matter to my parents. My mother, a non-practicing Christian, my father a devout non-believer who considers himself a Persian through-and-through. They had selected the Hospital because of its state of the art medical facilities and personnel. But, my curiosity was seriously piqued by the existence of the Hospital, not only that it was an American Hospital, but a Presbyterian Hospital, in one of the holiest Shi’a cities in the world. Who were these audacious men and women so brazen to settle in a city entrenched in its own strict religious beliefs?

It turns out that as far back as the 1870’s American Christian missionaries had come to Iran (at that time: Persia) to help build schools, medical clinics and hospitals and of course, proselytize. One such missionary was a young man by the name of Howard Baskerville, born in Nebraska and educated at Princeton. Baskerville came to Iran in 1907 and began to teach Iranian boys and girls at the Presbyterian Mission School in Tabriz, northwestern Iran. Two years after his arrival, during Iran’s Constitutional Revolution, Baskerville took up the cause of the Iranians who were dissatisfied with the Qajar Dynasty (which pre-dates the Pahlavi Dynasty that was overthrown in 1979), by raising a volunteer army. He did so against the advice of the evangelical Presbyterian missionaries and the American Consul in Tabriz. He saw the Constitutionalists struggle for democracy identical to America’s war for independence from Great Britain.

The Qajar Royalists, with support from the Czarist Russia, had taken Tabriz under siege. Baskerville and his hundred-man army that included mostly young noblemen and some of his pupils attempted to break the ten-month siege. But as Baskerville and two others set off on a sortie to collect food for the city from a nearby village, he was shot in the back by a sniper from the Royalist’s army. The bullet went straight through his heart, killing him instantly. He was only 24.

One hundred years after his death, Baskerville continues to be revered as not only a hero by the Iranian people, who call him the “Iranian Lafayette,” but most importantly a shaheed, or martyr. His sacrifice at 24 turned him into a national legend. At his funeral, thousands turned out for a massive outpouring of mourning. He was buried in the Christian Armenian cemetery in Tabriz. When the Persian parliament reconvened seven months later, the first item on its agenda was a speech of tribute to the slain American. Even Ernest Hemingway credits his participation in the Spanish Civil War to Howard Baskerville and modeled the character of Robert Jordan in his novel For Whom the Bells Toll after him.

In 2003, a bronze bust of Baskerville was erected in Tabriz’s Constitution House. The Persian inscription at the bottom of the bust reads: Howard C. Baskerville. He was a patriot – history maker.

It is, therefore, interesting how an exploration of the place of my birth led me to Howard C. Baskerville. At a time when relations between Iran and the US continue to be strained and hostile, it is worth to remember the words of Baskerville, the young American missionary, who was quoted as saying: “The only difference between me and these people is my place of birth, and this is not a big difference.”

(The above is an excerpt from Jasmin’s memoire “Cinema Iran,” a work-in-progress.)

Jasmin S. Kuehnert
President & CEO ACEI, Inc.
www.acei1.com

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The Music of Language

January 5, 2012
by Jackie Parker

I had been asked to teach a writing workshop for a group of women and their teenage daughters who lived within blocks of each other in Alhambra California, a city of 80,000 eight miles from downtown Los Angeles. Alhambra is the birthplace of the painter Norman Rockwell whose scenes of everyday American life graced the covers of the Saturday Evening Post magazine for forty years. Many of these women were first generation Americans: Mexican, Filipino, Korean, who, by any standards had achieved a great deal. One had begun selling hotdogs at Dodger games. She now owned several properties, another was a nursing supervisor in a large hospital, another a social worker with a Master’s Degree in family counseling. They had worked and studied their way to impressive positions, bought homes, raised families, lived in a manner far exceeding their parents’ dreams for them.

But it seemed that they were having trouble getting along with their teenage daughters, and one of the women, who was enrolled in a workshop of mine, thought that by writing together they would find a way to create meaningful connections and a basis for understanding each other as women. The daughters, who had known each other since they were toddlers, had agreed to give it a try.

As I sat down in the comfortable living room and looked around at the fourteen of them—I was apprehensive and yet excited to see what would happen in the next two hours. The truth was I had no idea what I was going to ask them to write about, and no idea whether this group would end in disaster or triumph. I rarely prepare a topic before meeting a group, feeling out the needs of the people in the room by listening to what they write in the first exercise: a five minute free-writing that elicits results I still don’t understand after fifteen years of doing this work. People open up to aspects of themselves that are moving and deep and true, as if those truths are standing behind a door waiting to be invited into the room. But would teen-age girls risk writing their truths with their mothers right there? Would their mothers risk revealing themselves to their girls?

I had asked everyone to leave their phones and connective devices in another room and one of the girls said she felt really strange. Even stranger when we began simply by sitting in quiet together, breathing in silence for five minutes. A few of the girls laughed nervously. Some of them squirmed. I held the quiet like a cloak, spreading it out over the fidgets and giggles as they settled in. Sometimes just five minutes of silence in a room can shift moods and connect us to the inner life that we hunger for and often fear, but that we must work consciously to give to ourselves these days because so much that is rich waits for us there.

Just before the writing began one of the women asked if she could write in her native language. “Of course,” I said, off handedly. “Write in whatever language feels right for you.” She was the first person to read that day. “I know you won’t understand what I’m saying but I had to write this.” she began.

I had never heard Filipino spoken at such length. And no one but her daughter could follow the story. And yet, as she read, haltingly at first, and then musically, her words rising into a rhythm and meaning we could sense but not quite know, something happened to us all. I looked around the room and there were tears in the eyes of many of the women and girls. Simply hearing the language had moved us. Was it possible that we had gleaned their meaning as well? “Could you read it again?” everyone urged once she had finished. How beautiful was her first language. It was a privilege to listen, we all agreed. A privilege just to hear. Then she translated her story to us. “It’s a letter to my mother,” she said. “I’m apologizing to her. She had wanted me to become a doctor, but I failed. I failed her. All I was able to do was become a nurse. I have never spoken these words to anyone. I don’t even think I have ever really let myself feel them.”

Her daughter got up from her chair and embraced her. The tissues were passed around the room. We heard many deep and wise stories that day, in Spanish and Korean, in English, as well. It was a day of profound connection on many levels, far exceeding my goals for the group. It was a day that changed my teaching. Now wherever I go I remind people that they may write in any language they choose. And roomfuls of people are graced with the music of languages they might never have heard. And if not the language, then the stories that arise from the experiences that are held in the quintessential American experience: our immigrant selves. There are 92 languages spoken in the City of Los Angeles. One day, I want to have heard stories in them all.

Jackie Parker is a writer and teacher who conducts workshops nationwide.
She can be reached at jackie@jackie-parker.com

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George Whitman, Shakespeare & Co., and what I learned from living in Paris

December 29, 2011

George Whitman died recently at the ripe old age of 98.   He took over the famous Left Bank bookstore, Shakespeare & Co., after the original owner, Sylvia Beach, left it at the onset of World War II. She ran it as a publishing company that famously published James Joyce’s revolutionary novel Ulysses in 1922. The book was banned in the U.S., no American publisher would publish it.  It was considered obscene.  But what is considered obscene in America is often considered great literature or art in Paris.  George Whitman took over the book store part after she left and ran it pretty much until he was in his 90s and infirm; his daughter then took over.

My three years in Paris in the 1970s taught me much more than I ever learned in college. When in Paris you discover Arab and African culture. The powerful music emanating from these regions, and the art that moved Picasso, Debussy, and Brancusi to create fabulous new works. I heard a lot of African Arabic music that was simply out of reach in LA. I also learned about the great multi-ethnic food culture of the City of Lights, both 3 star and three-franc, as well as the joys of walking in a city designed for the pedestrian instead of the car. And plenty of good slang.

You learn from living abroad. You come to understand how other people live and think. Cultural differences become less important. I was concerned, when George Bush was elected in 1998, that he’d never travelled outside the U.S. This lack of understanding certainly colored his presidency after September 11th, 2001, and his self-righteous, chauvinistic crusader behavior reflected this ignorance.

But back to Shakespeare & Co. and George Whitman. I got to know George Whitman while in Paris in 1970 and a student at the Sorbonne.  I had gone to Paris because I spoke French, loved France, nouvelle vague movies as well as Luis Bunuel and Jacques Tati. And Flaubert, Gide, Balzac, Stendhal, Voltaire, ad infinitum.  I loved that great photo of Jean Paul Belmondo smoking the Gaulois. And then there was the ultimate sex kitten, Brigitte Bardot. But, truth be told, I was also trying to delay draft induction into the army and be sent to Vietnam.

I liked the store for several reasons.  It was well-heated, had books everywhere, both in English and French. Books were much cheaper there than at the French bookstores (books are $$$ in France).  There were lots of comfy chairs to peruse what you found there, and no obligation to buy.  I didn’t go there to socialize, though many people did.  George to his credit also took in the homeless, hungry, and lonely crowd.  Shakespeare & Co. was a true literary and social oasis.

Obits have written about George Whitman’s lifelong commitment to running the store. For my part, I found him cantankerous, crotchety, and bilious.  I must have told him that I was living there partly because I had a small trust fund that my brother, sister and I got when we turned 21.  I must have told George about this, because he began pestering me every time I came in to buy the store from him.  It was the last thing I wanted at the time—I was only 23–but he just kept asking, but it seemed to me at the time that he, at 57, had had enough of it and wanted to unload the store.

I sometimes visited French libraries—don’t ask me why bookstores are called libraries in France……bibliothèque is the word for library—-but found the beautifully-bound paperbacks very expensive and beyond my budget.  One day, emerging from the Presses Universitaires near the Sorbonne, I was arrested by the C.R.S.–the French riot police–and thrown in jail.  There was a student demonstration at the Pantheon that I didn’t even know about.  But my carte de sejour said I was a Sorbonne student and that was enough.  I have a police record (dossier) there…I found this out when I was applying for a work permit after returning and getting a teaching job at the École Universelle a few years later.   I was awarded a knighthood by the French government a few years ago for helping promote Francophone music, and have a nice green medal framed in my office.  Now if I could only get my police record to proudly frame and put next to it. Wonder if there is a freedom of information act in France?

So George Whitman is gone, but Shakespeare & Co. is there for future generations of people, bibliophiles or not, to discover.  It’s there where it’s always been, on the Left Bank close to Notre Dame, Cluny, the Sorbonne., and all the wonders of Paris’ Latin Quarter.

Tom Schnabel, M.A.
Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
Host of music program KCRW 89.9 FM Sundays noon-2 p.m.
Blogs for KCRW (rhythm planet / KCRW)
Author & Music educator, UCLA, SCIARC, currently doing music salons
www.tomschnabel.com

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Season’s Greetings from ACEI

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